our wild youth
by oswins
Summary: "She watched as you fell to pieces. Then she took your face in her hands; she kissed you, and when she pulled away, Elena's eyes were just like yours." -–In which Damon and Elena turn off their humanity and see the world in all its corrupted splendour. /au


_a/n: for elza._

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setting fire to our insides for fun  
collecting names of the lovers that went wrong.  
**–youth, daughter**

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You never realise quite how _noisy_ everything is until you turn it off. Until you stop the rampage of emotions which flow through your flesh, your blood, your blood, your cold, dead heart. You never noticed how loud the voices are – the whines, the tears and the shouting. All those pathetic, little humans, living their empty, cardboard lives.

_Oh, but you are so much more. _

Your humanity has always been your greatest flaw, you think, it made you feel so, so much. It made you yearn to be touched, to be held, to be loved. It warmed the edge of your icy heart, chipping at the stone which had built up inside your veins.

It made you fall in love. Love. You wanted it – you craved it, so damn much – and in the end it didn't really matter, did it? Because no matter how much you _yearned _for it, once you'd had a taste of it – just skimmed your tongue across the top of it's dark crust – you realized you wanted nothing more than to be done with it forever.

_Elena. _

Oh, Elena. She had you head over heels, didn't she? She made you _better. _She made you – Damon Salvatore, sociopath extraordinaire, feel. Elena Gilbert clawed her way under your skin with burning nails and began to melt the man of steel. The first time you kissed her, you felt your body was on fire. Your whole body fizzed and burned and you suddenly realized that's what fire does – it melts.

But now. Now Elena is no better than you, really. She switched off moments after you – seconds, even. She watched you as everything you had built up inside of yourself began to topple. She watched as the stars died in your eyes, morphing into endless, bottomless pits. She watched as you fell to pieces.

Then she took your face in her hands and she _kissed _you, and when she pulled away, Elena's eyes were just like yours.

_x_

They all judged you for it, of course. They judged both of you – Damon and Elena. They judged you for turning it _off, _for stopping the pain which had gathered so hard and tight inside of you it had driven you both to near insanity.

You hear them all whispering, the voices they think are quite carry across the roads and the fields and the houses – across the whole damn world. You can never run far enough away from the whispering.

Stefan begs you both to turn it back on. He doesn't stop. Sometimes you wonder if it is more for Elena's sake than yours that he is actually trying. He loves you, sure, but sometimes you can see, in the furthest corners of his eyes, that really – really, really – all he wants you to do is leave.

Caroline throws a fit. She runs at you – a five foot hurricane of blonde hair and too much perfume – and punches you until her arms hang useless by her sides. Then she shouts. You try not to laugh. Elena's standing next to you, her hand running up and down your own arm, her touch so light you wonder if she's really there at all.

Bonnie's next and don't think she even tries at all. She feeds Elena some crap about friendship and family and love. Elena sits there passively. Eventually she stands up and pushes the front door open so hard it snaps off its hinges. Bonnie just watches her go.

You and Elena don't really _mind_, the judging and the looks and the stares. Not really. You're free now – the weight of _feeling _has been lifting. You can go anywhere; she anything; be anyone.

So you do. One day you pack your bags, kiss Mystic Fucking Falls goodbye and leave. You drive out of the twisted, little town and you decide you don't care at all.

"I hear Paris is nice this time of year," you tell Elena.

_x_

You don't stay in Paris for long, though. You can tell Elena hates it the moment the plane lands on the barren terminal. There's an odd tension in her body was you walk through the narrow, streets of the City of Love, your hand wrapped around her waist. She still laughs as you make stupid, crude, devil-may-care jokes about the people and the sights and the food. She still presses her lips against yours in feverish desire as you kiss against a wall in an abandoned alley way. She still shares a pretty blonde with you at a pub just outside the Louvre, letting the blood run down her cheeks until you're certain you have never seen anything more beautiful.

But as you lie next to her at night, you notice how her eyes flit around the room, how her body is stiff, half ready to run and run and run. So, quite discreetly you book two tickets on your laptop and the next day you board the first plane to Italy.

_x_

You can never quite put into words how you felt about Venice. For six beautiful, beautiful months it feels like home. You throw yourselves into the world of parties, drink and food fangs first, so to speak. The revels leave you breathless, reaching for more.

Italian food has always been your favourite, after all.

You dance across the cobbled flagstones, feet skimming the top of the murky water and you think that the best thing about this whole fucked up arrangement is that she is there with you. And oh, it is so much more fun without the turmoil of feelings which have built up inside of you.

One night, as you stand upon the balustrade of the Doge's Palace, you realise this is everything you have ever wanted. You're seeing the world – traveling in a whirlpool of parties, passion and lust. Except you're not alone. She's by your side, and her eyes are dark, endless pools, just like your and you realise it is this which you had yearned for all your ancient life.

Later, as the pair of you lie in the rickety single bed, pressed up against the peeling wallpaper of your flat above an old pizza restaurant, Elena's body is flushed against yours, her fingers tracing patterns on the flat of your chest. Outside your ears can detect every heartbeat, whisper, voice of every person walking by, but really, the only voice you really want to hear is hers.

And then suddenly – as quickly as it came – it's all over. Elena spots Stefan in St. Marks square; she comes back to the flat, grabs your hand then you're running all over again.

_x_

London is...grey. But really, you both enjoy it more than you want to admit. There's something oddly appealing about the smog and the rain and the endless, grey streets. Elena says they're like the pair of you – "twisted, dark and oh so beautiful."

You can't help but agree with her.

Over the months that you're there your favourite haunt becomes the the very top turret of Tower Bridge. You take turns of climbing right to the top of the flag pole, and balancing there; with the wind in your hair and the rain or the sun dancing off your face there's a blindness in front of your eyes and you realise that you are _fearless. _

One day in summer when the sun is high in an azure sky, and the crowded bridge sways beneath you, packed with all those happy, shiny people going about their lives – boring, mundane lives – and you're sitting on your tower and you try and remember if you miss it.

Do you miss a little town in Virginia, where everyone lives and then everyone dies? Do you miss the tears and the laughter and trying to smile when really all you want to do is run and never look back? Do you?

_No._

You decide it in a split second – a second which is filled with all the free emptiness which has settled in your heart since you ran. You'll never miss anything at all, except a woman with chestnut hair and a bright, bright sun peaking through the grey clouds in the middle of beautiful Britannia.

_x_

Of all the people you expect to find you next, it is not Rebekah. Pretty, little Rebekah, who really only wants to be loved. That makes you laugh. You wonder why – after thousands of years, pulling her way through life – she hasn't realized that love isn't anything but trouble. Oh, she is so splendidly ancient but she is still so bloody naive.

Rebekah corners you at Embankment, while Elena is still enjoying a handsome bartender in Battersea. Rebekah's just as you remember her – all legs and blonde hair. "Long time no see, Salvatore."

"Rebekah."

"Miss me, Damon?"

You roll your eyes. "Endlessly."

She winks. "Would you believe me if I said we missed you back home?"

You study Rebekah. "We're not coming back."

"Oh, we'll see, Salvatore."

And just like that Rebekah's gone.

When you back to the flat you tell Elena about your encounter. For a long time, she just stares out of the dirty window. You leave her be and when you get back there are two tickets to Prague sitting on the bed.

_x_

Quite simply, Prague is just _lust. _Most of the time you barely leave your hotel room, hiding behind lace curtains and silk sheets. When you do leave more often than not you find yourselves pressed against brick walls in the dimly lit backstreets, hands roaming across icy skin. You begin to learn everything about her – every freckle littered across her face; every centimeter of flesh; you find constellations on the small of her back and map the curve of her hips in the sky. She kisses every inch of your oh-so weary body and you realise that up until this moment, you really haven't lived at all.

You're in Prague for so long you begin to know every winding backstreet; every long forgotten church; every diner; every faded piece of graffiti. You and Elena, in a blaze of passion, watch the sun cross a hazy sky from east to west and you think you could stay here forever.

One morning, as you lie in bed, watching a half sun rise over a city of spires and secrets, you feel Elena watching you.

"Stop being creepy," you tell her.

"I thought you're the creepy one." Her hands are twisted in yours.

You turn so your noses are just touching, brushing against each other as the early morning light spills over your naked bodies. "It pains me to say that you're rapidly taking over that position."

Her lips her inches away from yours and you suddenly think of terribly broken you both are, but as she pulls you towards her, you can't really bring yourself to care. Because caring is for humans, isn't it? And right now, in Elena's arms you're anything but human.

_x_

For the first time since you left a small town you can barely remember, you feel at home in Prague. There's something about its mysticism which entrances you; it ensnares you round its little finger with promises of drink, sex and blood. It's funny how you left a town called Mystic Falls in which the only _mystery _was wondering what to wear to the next, fancy party and now you're revealing in enigma after enigma – it's almost like they're hunting you down, twisting you into their dark, dark pits.

You stay in Prague so long that Mystic Falls and the dream like days of Virginia seem like an illusion. You and Elena take a course to learn Czechoslovakian. The pair of you last four lessons until in the middle of learning how to say love Elena decides that the large woman instructing you on the correct verb endings would make a far better supper than teacher. You laugh slightly into Elena's hair as she rips out the teacher's throat, a river of red running down her pale skin.

Later as you roam the backstreets, hand in hand Elena whispers in your ear that love translates into _láska. _

_x_

The corrupted beauty of Prague has trapped its may into your bitty heart so far that you barely recognize her when barbie vampire mark two appears at the foot of your bed one steamy Sunday morning. Caroline is as insistently _irritating_ as you remember. She doesn't seem at all fazed to find her best friend and yours truly naked in bed. She wines at you until she's short of breath. Then she asks you to come home.

You look at Elena, and Elena laughs.

_x_

Next you go to New York and begin to engrave your names in the stars. It's so close to Mystic Falls you can feel Elena's shoulders tense at any unlucky person who looks at her for more than a second. One night you sneak onto the stage at Broadway. You dance your way across the stage and you marvel at the light shining on her bare arms. The remains of blood from her last victim stick, crusted to the corner of her mouth. You watch her and clap until she spins off the stage and in the end you end up a tangled mess of limbs amidst the velvet seats until the sunlight begins to illuminate the tiny particles of dust rising of the ancient stage.

_x_

In New York days don't seem like days and nights seem to stretch on forever. Except it's a good kind of forever. It's the kind of forever which is boundless – like you can stand on the very top of Manhattan Bridge, wrap your arms around her waist and understand what to be infinite really is. You realise that despite what they might say, you can run forever. You can run forever as long as she is buy your side.

_x_

You've been traveling now so long that there isn't really one place you can call home. The countries, the cities, the colour, have all blurred into one big daydream floating on a long lost summers afternoon. But there's someone. A fire which burns right in the very center of your blackened heart. Someone once told you that she makes you better, and it isn't until you're lying on the sand in a cove in Cornwall – your very own pocket in the back of beyond – you realise how heartbreakingly, beautifully true that really is.

_x_

You're Damon and she's Elena. Together you're ruthless, you're beautiful and _oh_, how you both shine.

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_a/n: _i still have no idea what this is or where it came from but i hope you enjoyed it! please don't favourite without reviewing!


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